In his unctuous conference speech, David Cameron said this about Jeremy Corbyn:

Thousands of words have been written about the new Labour leader, but you only really need to know one thing: he thinks the death of Osama bin Laden was a 'tragedy'. No. A tragedy is nearly 3,000 people murdered one morning in New York. A tragedy is the mums and dads who never came home from work that day. A tragedy is people jumping from the towers after the planes hit. My friends – we cannot let that man inflict his security-threatening, terrorist-sympathising, Britain-hating ideology on the country we love.

Jeremy Corbyn thinks the death of Osama bin Laden was a tragedy? That sounds really bad. And indeed the same claim has been said repeatedly in the Tory press (for example here, here, and here). But what did he actually say? He was on Iran's Press TV and was asked what he thought about the shooting of Osama Bin Laden by US Navy Seals and this is what he said:

Well I think that everyone [accused of a crime] should be put on trial. I also profoundly disagree with the death penalty, under any circumstances for anybody. That’s my own view. On this there was no attempt whatsoever that I can see, to arrest him, to put him on trial, to go through that process. This was an assassination attempt, and is yet another tragedy, upon a tragedy, upon a tragedy. The World Trade Centre was a tragedy, the attack on Afghanistan was a tragedy, the war in Iraq was a tragedy. Tens of thousands of people have died. Torture has come back onto the world stage, been canonised, virtually, into law by Guantanamo and Bagram. Can't we learn the lessons from this? [...] The solution has got to be law, not war.

He's saying, very clearly, that Osama bin Laden should have been put on trial. It's a tragedy that due legal process was bypassed in favour of military intervention.

The question is, did David Cameron know that he was misrepresenting Jeremy Corbyn so egregiously? If he didn't, then he's ignorant. If he did, he's a liar. So which is it?

You may be here because you’ve come across a book, or play, or article of mine and you want to know more. Maybe you’re a student or a colleague or a friend or an acquaintance and you want to find out more about me. Maybe you are gathering ammunition for a vicious ad hominem attack that will expose me for the charlatan that I am.